I want to start today's deep dive with a bit
of a contradiction. OK, I'm listening. Because
usually when you look at a map, a specific point,
a set of coordinates, it represents one thing.
Right, like a house or a bridge or whatever.
Exactly. But we have a set of coordinates today
for you that seems to be having a bit of an identity
crisis. And it's a crisis that actually tells
us a lot about how history gets written. Yeah.
So the coordinates are 45 degrees, 38 minutes
north, and 23 degrees, 13 minutes east. Now,
if you punch that into a GPS, you are going to
land right in the middle of Hunadora County in
Romania. Beautiful area. It is. And if you look
at the official database entry for this exact
spot, the classification is, well, it's very
clear. It says Feli Albe. It says Castra. Right.
Which is the Latin word for a military fort.
So, case closed. We're doing a deep dive on a
Roman fort. Well, if you stop reading at the
headline, sure, it's a Roman fort. But the minute
you start, you know, pulling the actual files,
the papers written by the people who dug the
place up, that label really starts to keel off.
And that is exactly what we are unpacking today.
We are looking at Faeil Al Bay. On paper, it's
a Roman auxiliary fort in the province of Dacia.
But in the footnotes, it's described as something
entirely different. A Dacian settlement. Yeah.
And we're going to figure out why those two things
are fighting for space on the exact same hill.
And who exactly decided to put them there? Because
this is really an exercise in reading between
the lines of a database. We have a physical location,
we have administrative labels, and we have a
list of archaeologists. And some of the biggest
names in the field, too. Absolutely. People who
spent years arguing about what this place actually
was. So let's ground ourselves first. We're in
Hanador County. For anyone listening who hasn't
backpacked through Romania, paint the picture.
Why is this specific spot important in the grand
scheme of ancient history in Transylvania? Well,
you really have to understand the geography to
understand the conflict here. Juanadora isn't
just some random province. In the ancient world,
this was the absolute heartland of the Dacian
kingdom. This is where their capital was located.
It's rugged, it's highly defensible, and crucially,
it was incredibly rich in resources. We're talking
gold iron. Gold iron timber. So when the Romans
showed up, this wasn't like marching into an
open plain. They were walking into a massive
fortress region. Right. A really hostile environment
for invading army. Exactly. And that is why the
administrative layers we see in the source material
are so interesting. The entry lists the province
as Dacia, which is the broad term, right? Yeah.
But then it gets much more specific. It lists
Dacia Apulensis and Dacia Superior. I wanted
to ask you about that, actually, because to me,
that just looked like I don't know, bureaucratic
noise. Like someone listing USA and then North
America. Why do we need three different names
for the exact same patch of dirt? Because the
names represent time, not just space. Oh, interesting.
Yeah. Rome didn't just conquer Dacia and leave
it as is. They were constantly tweaking how they
managed it because it was such a difficult frontier
to hold onto. So it was an evolving situation.
Exactly. Dacia superior was an administrative
division that was created shortly after the initial
conquest. But later on, things get reshuffled
again and you get Dacia Appulensis. So finding
fail LB. listed under both of those specific
labels. That's not a typo in the database. No,
not at all. It's essentially a timeline. It tells
us that this site, whatever it was, was active
and significant enough to be tracked through
multiple major reorganizations of the Roman Empire.
It survived the red tape. If it was just a temporary
marching camp, it wouldn't necessarily show up
in these later distinct administrative layers.
OK, so we have a site that persisted. It's sitting
there in the mountains of Transylvania, just
watching the empire change the map. around it.
Yeah. But this brings us back to the main event.
The classification. Right. The big bold text
on the file says Roman Castra. Which is a facility
for auxiliary troops. Meaning non -citizen soldiers
fighting for Rome. Correct. But then I looked
at the bibliography for this site. This is where
I got really confused. There is a primary reference
from 1969. It's by Hadrian Daikoviciu and Ioan
Gladiario. Two absolute legends in the field.
Right. And the title of their paper is in Romanian.
But the translation is, well, it's pretty problematic
for the whole Roman fort theory. Feed the translation
for us. It says considerations on the chronology
of the Dacian settlement at Faele Albi. And there
is the tension. Yeah. How do you get Roman fort
as the main database category when the primary
source material is literally titled Dacian settlement?
Are we looking at a mistake? Did someone file
this wrong? We aren't looking at a mistake at
all. We are looking at stratigraphy. Meaning
the layers of dirt? The layers of dirt, yes,
but also a layering of history. This is arguably
the most common problem in Roman archaeology,
specifically in a place like Dacia. You always
have to ask the question, what was there before
the Romans arrived? And you mentioned earlier
this was the Dacian heartland, so presumably
people were already living there. Exactly. Phaeli
Albi is incredibly close to the Doshan capital.
It was a major terraced settlement. It had civilian
habitation, likely distinct Dacian architecture,
maybe even high religious significance. OK. When
the Romans finally conquered the area, they didn't
just bulldoze everything and leave it completely
flat. They repurposed it. Often, yes. Or they
built a military installation right on top of
the burned ruins to ensure the locals didn't
come back and try to rebuild. A show of force.
Very much so. So when Dekoviciu and Gluderia
are writing about the Dacian settlement in 1969,
they are actively analyzing the indigenous roots
of the site. The bottom layer. Right. But the
database, which classifies it strictly as a castra,
is focusing almost entirely on the imperial overlay,
the Roman military presence that came afterward.
It kind of feels like the database is burying
the lead a bit. By just calling it a Roman fort,
it almost erases the people who were there first.
That is a very modern way to look at it, and
it's a completely valid point. Roman administrative
records tend to dominate our view of history
because the Romans were the ones writing things
down and building massive structures in stone.
Yeah, they left a very loud footprint. They did.
But the actual artifacts pulled out of the ground
tells the story of the settlement that predates
them. And this is where another specific book
mentioned in the source material really comes
in. It's called The Dation Stones Speak by Paul
Lachlan McKendrick. Ah, yes, a classic published
in 1975. The title alone, The Dation Stones Speak,
it seems to take a definitive side in this argument.
It's not called The Roman Forts Speak. That's
a great point. McKendrick was trying to synthesize
the complex archaeology of Romania for an English
-speaking audience. He was very interested in
that persistence of local culture. So he wasn't
just interested in the Conquers? No. He wasn't
just looking at standard Roman walls. He was
looking at how the Dacian identity survived or
mutated under Roman rule. So Fae Ali Albi is
practically the poster child. for his entire
book. It's a place where you can point to the
map and say, here is the native settlement and
here is the imperial fort that sat right on top
of it. And that duality is exactly why those
coordinates, 45 degrees, 38 minutes north, 23
degrees, 13 minutes east, are so heavy with meaning.
It's not just a spot on a map. No, it's a crash
site between two major civilizations. I want
to pivot a little bit to the people who are actually
doing the digging. The source material lists
a lot of names. I mean, we have Alexandra Volpe,
Ion Glideriu, I own PISO. Hadrian Daikoviciu,
A. Rusu, Eugen Yaroslavsky, M. Barbalescu, and
T. Sorosianou. It feels like a roll call. It's
not just a roll call, though. It's a lineage.
These aren't just random researchers who spent
a weekend in the dirt. If you study Roman Dacia,
these are the absolute titans of the field. Who
stands out to you the most from that list? Yeah.
Because the names Hadrian Daikoviciu and Ioan
Gladeriu just keep popping up in the references.
They wrote that 1969 paper we were just talking
about. Hadrian Daikoviciu is a tower. His father,
Constantin Daicovici, was also a massive figure
in Romanian archaeology. Together, they practically
defined the modern study of the Dussian fortresses.
Oh, wow. So when you see Hadrian Daicovici's
name attached to Fiele Alba, it signals immediately
that this site was considered a top priority.
Why is that? What makes it such a priority for
someone of his stature? Because of that exact
settlement versus fort question we've been discussing,
Daikoviciu was deeply invested in understanding
the Dacian state on its own terms. He wasn't
just hunting for Roman eagles and Latin inscriptions.
He wanted the local story. He wanted to know
how the Dacian society functioned before it was
dismantled. So for him to focus so heavily on
Fili Albi suggests he saw it as a key piece of
the puzzle regarding the Dacian defensive network,
not just another Roman outpost. And what about
the Lodario? Iowa and Gloudera was brilliant
at analyzing the architecture and the complex
trade networks of the region when they teamed
up for that 1969 paper in Acta Musei Napotensis.
Let's pause on that. Acta Musei Napotensis. That's
the specific journal listed in the footnotes,
right? Volume six. Yes. And this is vital context
for the listener. We are talking about the late
1960s. This site was being actively analyzed
and debated during a very specific era. Right.
And the research is coming out in this specific
academic volume, showing that the scholarly community
was intensely focused on unraveling the timeline
of this one location. It's fascinating because
it highlights this real tension. We have the
dry Western classification in the database. calling
it a Roman fort. But then we have the 1969 paper
diving deep into the chronology of the Dacian
settlement. Exactly. It really emphasizes how
you just can't read the summary of a historical
site and walk away thinking, you know, the whole
story. You have to look at who is writing the
papers and when they are writing them. Absolutely.
Speaking of when, let's talk about the timeline
of the sources themselves. The Dykevichy and
Glodaria paper in Acta Musei and Opus Sensis
is from 1969. The McKendrick book from the University
of North Carolina Press is from 1975. That's
a six -year gap. Which, in the pre -internet
era, is actually pretty fast for international
academic translation and synthesis. It is, but
it also highlights a massive barrier in how history
gets shared, doesn't it? If I'm an archaeology
student in the U .S. in 1970, I have absolutely
no idea this conversation about Phalaeolbe is
even happening, unless I can read Romanian. and
somehow have a subscription to Acta Musaenopisensis?
That is spot on. And that is exactly why McKendrick
acts as the vital bridge here. He reads the reports.
He understands the significance of what Daikoviciu
and Gliderio are arguing. And he brings that
nuanced knowledge back to the English speaking
world through the University of North Carolina
Press. So without McKendrick publishing in 1975,
Faley Albee might just remain a simple Roman
Ford in English literature indefinitely. It's
very likely. McKendrick's work allowed international
audiences to see the Dacian stones underneath
the Roman administration. It's a great reminder
that archaeological knowledge travels slowly
across language barriers, and it often risks
getting simplified in transit. Yeah, so if we
look at the source text we have today... for
this deep dive, this short entry with just some
coordinates, a couple of administrative tags
and a few references. It's really a compression
of all that immense effort. I like to think of
it as a zip file of history. You have the coordinates,
which are the physical reality. You have the
administrative tags like Decius Superior and
Deci Apulensis, which represent the Roman bureaucracy.
And then you have the bibliography, which is
the modern academic struggle to define what actually
happened there. And the struggle itself. seems
to be the main point. It's not really about winning
the argument of whether it's a fort or a town.
It's about acknowledging that for the people
who actually lived there, it was a layered reality.
It was a reality that fundamentally changed.
Imagine living in Fele Albi right before the
Roman conquest. It's a thriving Dacian settlement.
You have your home, your pottery, your daily
routine. And then just a few years later, after
the war, it's a Roman auxiliary castra. It's
the exact same coordinates, the exact same sun.
rise over the mountains, but it is a completely
different world. The fort and the settlement
aren't contradictory at all. They are just sequential
chapters in the exact same book. That is a really
haunting way to put it. The coordinates don't
move, but the entire world changes around them.
And the archaeologists we listed, Volpe, Piso,
Rusu, Aeroslavski, Barbulescu, Sorosianu, Daikovichu,
Ladaryu, they are all just trying to read those
chapters out of the dirt. It really makes me
wonder about all the other short stubs or brief
entries in these historical databases. You know,
you see a name and a coordinate and you just
scroll past it. But every single one of them
probably has a dedicated team of scholars who
spent a decade of their life trying to figure
out what was really there. There are no boring
archaeological sites. There are only sites we
haven't bothered to read the footnotes for yet.
I think that's the perfect takeaway for today.
The tag Dacia Superior sounds incredibly dry
at first glance, but it represents the logistics
of a massive empire. The names in the bibliography
sound like just another academic citation, but
they represent a rigorous, decades -long effort
to uncover a localized history. And Fayal Albi
sounds like just another dot on a map. but it's
a literal and figurative battlefield of identity.
And it's all just sitting there at 45 degrees,
38 minutes north, 23 degrees, 13 minutes east,
waiting for someone to notice the details. Well,
we noticed today. We did. And it leaves me with
one final thought for you as we wrap up. If a
site listed as a simple fort with just some coordinates
and a lift of names holds this much hidden conflict,
How much more history is sitting right now in
untranslated footnotes, just waiting for someone
to finally read the title of a 50 -year -old
research paper? Always check the stratigraphy
of your sources. Thanks for taking this deep
dive with us. Until next time.